We read a few familiar words, firstly from
John's Gospel, chapter 14, and verse 16.
I will pray the Father, and he shall
give you another Advocate, that he may be
with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth,
whom the world cannot receive, because it beholdeth
him not, neither knoweth him, ye know him.
For he abideth with you, and shall be
in you.
I will not leave you desolate.
I come unto you.
Verse 25, These things have I spoken unto
you, while yet abiding with you.
But the Advocate, even the Holy Spirit, whom
the Father will send in my name, he
shall teach you all things, and bring to
your remembrance all that I said unto you.
And the fragment so well known to us,
the first chapter, Letter to the Ephesians, and
verse 17.
I pray that the Father of glory may
give unto you a Spirit of wisdom, and
revelation in the knowledge of him.
In our consideration of the Holy Spirit as
divine character for divine testimony, we move
round to another angle this afternoon, to view
him as light.
It was truth last night, it
was holiness this morning, now it is light.
God is light.
Jesus is the light of men and of
the world, it is stated.
The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of
revelation.
God dwells in the light.
The city, which is the last presentation in
the Bible, has the light of God.
The word of God is a light, a
lamp.
Christians are said to be children of the
light.
So everything related to God is light.
In him there is no darkness at all.
It is Satan who is the prince of
darkness.
His works are the works of darkness.
His children are the children of darkness.
These are the two contrasted and conflicting kingdoms.
Kingdom of light, the kingdom of darkness.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of light,
according to what we have just read as
from the Lord Jesus.
When he is come, he shall guide you
into all the truth.
He shall take the things which are mine
and show them unto you.
So we look at the Holy Spirit as
character and then as function in terms of
light.
God never begins to build until there is
light.
The creation, before he proceeded to build, he
divided the light from the darkness.
He said, let there be light.
That is an intimation of an abiding law,
that God does all his work on the
basis of light.
Those two great symbolic representations of God, the
tabernacle and the temple, were the result of
spiritual illumination to Moses and to David.
Before they could be, light had to be
given.
Someone had to be the receptacle, vessel of
the revelation.
When we come into the New Testament, we
find that the first definite intimation of the
church, I will build my church, was made
immediately after the illumination had come to Peter
as to the person of the Lord Jesus.
Flesh and blood has not revealed it, revealed
it to thee, but my Father, I will
build my church.
Consistency in the principle of God.
You pass from the first intimation of the
church in the New Testament, first mention of
the Word, to that full disclosure of its
eternal calling, vocation, and destiny in this letter
to the Ephesians.
And you find that as in the beginning,
so in the full-awed presentation, it's along
the line of illumination or revelation by the
Holy Spirit.
Lord Jesus said, I will pray the Father.
He will give you another advocate.
He shall guide you into all the truth.
Not sure whether in the mind of the
Lord Jesus there was the thought of the
pillar, the cloud in the wilderness, guiding to
the land.
May well have been.
But he said, I will pray the Father.
He will give you one to guide you
into all the truth.
Paul is in prayer.
In the same way as his Master, praying,
praying.
And his prayer is on the same line.
I bow my knees unto the Father.
Same Father that he will grant unto you
a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
knowledge of him.
But here it is not the beginning of
revelation.
That was with Peter.
That is in Matthew 16.
Here it's another word which has not been
rightly translated in our version.
It is in the full knowledge of him.
The spirit of revelation in the full knowledge
of him.
So we have to see, first of all,
what light is.
If so much depends upon it.
So much rests upon it.
It is a bit like one of the
pillars upon which the whole structure of the
Church rests.
It is important that we know what it
is.
Firstly, as to character.
Well, light is transparency.
Light is clearness.
Light is absolute purity.
Light is honesty.
Light is openness of character.
Light hides nothing.
It does not believe in hiding anything.
Its whole action and nature is contrary to
hiding anything.
It has nothing to hide.
It shows everything.
It shows all.
That is, in other words, it is not
deceitful.
It does not want to cover anything or
make pretense or belief that something is other
than it is.
Light is single.
It is not double.
There is no duplicity about light.
Light is just light.
There is no darkness at all where there
is light.
Now we have pointed out that the city,
which as we so well know, is one
of the titles or designations of Christ Corporate,
Christ and his members, the Church, is characterized
by everything that speaks of the nature of
light.
It is characterized as a whole by crystal
clearness.
It is like a jasper stone, clear as
crystal.
Its streets are pure, that is, transparent gold,
if ever you have seen transparent gold.
Its river is water, clear as crystal.
Everything about it is of the nature of
light.
It is so much light in its character
that it has no need of the sun.
The light is in its own constitution.
It takes its character from the Lamb, who
is the light thereof.
You can see through this city and everything
in it.
I don't know whether you would like to
live in transparent houses, but when you live
in this city to adopt the figure or
the symbol, you won't be ashamed for anybody
to see what's going on.
You won't need to hide anything.
Well, you can just see through it.
All the sims which produces cloudiness and murkiness,
indefiniteness, and mists and clouds and all that
sort of thing, that sim will have been
finally abolished.
There will be no night there.
No night there.
All these things as you recognize are symbolic
terms, symbolic things.
It shows symbolically what the Holy Spirit has
come to do in men and women and
in the creation.
That is what he has come to do,
to make for a condition like that in
human nature.
He's undertaken a tremendous task.
That is what he has come to do,
is the Spirit of Light, that is his
character and his presence, is on the one
side to bring everything to an end that
is of the nature of darkness.
All these various shades of darkness, aspects of
darkness, including, as you see, a whole vocabulary
of words, come to bring all
that to an end by applying the cross
in which it was all brought to an
end in the person of the Lord Jesus.
To work that meaning of the cross out
in our lives so that everything that belongs
to that kingdom of darkness is removed.
In the end, with us, there is no
darkness.
Is that really what we think of when
we think of having, receiving, being filled with
the Holy Spirit?
Here again, perhaps a little reshaping of our
idea is called for.
It is true that he is many other
things.
He is the Spirit of Power.
He is the Spirit of Wisdom.
Yes, he is many other things, but with
them all he is this.
We must not make more of those demonstration
aspects of the Spirit in power and gifts
and capacities and works than we do of
the character side of the Holy Spirit.
If, dear friends, he is going to really
do his work in you and in me,
what he will do is to bring us
to be people who can be looked into
without any fear, without any drawing of the
blind, just be looked into.
We can bear to be looked into.
Our lives can bear to be looked into.
Our motives can bear to be looked into.
The Holy Spirit knows us.
He knows us.
We cannot deceive him.
We cannot hoodwink him as we say.
He knows us.
His dealings with us are with a knowledge
that we have not got about ourselves.
We must, therefore, give the Holy Spirit credit
for dealing with us according to a knowledge
of us that is beyond our own.
He has seen something that is contrary to
his own nature.
He has, looking in, found something that does
not answer to this character of absolute transparency.
He's dealing with it.
You see, we often think that sincerity, sincerity
on our part is all that is required.
We've only got to be sincere.
We say we are sincere.
I'd remind you that in any case there's
a difference between sincerity and reality.
But Saul of Tarsus was the most sincere
man alive in his day.
He was the most mistaken man alive in
his day.
Sincerity may be required.
It may be very important, and it is.
But don't let us deceive ourselves with our
sincerity.
Say that because we are downright sincere then
we must be right.
That is not the case.
Spirit may require sincerity to open the door.
But I believe that anything that is insincere
is a closed door to the Holy Spirit.
But it after all is only opening the
door for him to come in and then
begin to show us that sincere as we
were, we were wrong after all.
We were wrong after all.
That is exactly what happened, isn't it, with
Paul.
I verily thought that I ought to do
many things contrary to this way.
I verily thought that I ought to do.
Absolutely sincere, absolutely conscientious, and yet
most ignominiously mistaken until
a light came.
Then he saw it.
You see the point.
The Holy Spirit does not just accept our
sincerity as the everything.
He comes perhaps through that door.
Then he begins his work, showing that even
our purest motives were probably mixed.
Our most sincere intentions were tainted.
He works according to his knowledge, and we
must give him credit always for doing that,
for doing that.
Dear friends, if you and I are really,
really meaning business with God, and the Holy
Spirit has taken us through an experience, through
a death, which has been very self-revealing,
and a real shock to us as to
what was there that we would never have
believed had we been told, the end of
that is we are on our faces worshipping
him as the faithful and the true.
Not rebellion, not bitterness, but thanking God that
he has been so faithful with us, and
so true, so true.
We don't want to be let off doing
anything that is darkness at all.
Well, this is the first thing about the
Holy Spirit as light he is, and works
for complete transparency and honesty and purity without
a shadow, to bring us to that end
of glory, having the glory of God, because
there can be no glory in anything that
is of the kingdom of darkness.
Another thing about light is that it is
absolutely fearless.
Light is fearless.
If this character is really there, we're never
afraid of something being discovered.
A good conscience, a clear conscience, is a
tremendously courageous thing.
It's a very strong thing.
Puts you in a very strong position.
And where it is light, and there is
no darkness, nothing to be hidden, and therefore
nothing that we do not want to be
discovered or uncovered.
There is no fear.
There is the great strength of confidence and
assurance.
Light is a fearless thing.
Anything doubtful, anything doubtful or questionable about which
we are not sure, we are not sure
as to whether our position is right or
wrong, if we've got some question, we're always
afraid.
We're in the weakness of fear, are we
not?
It's like this.
Darkness and fear always go together, don't they?
Naturally, it's like that.
Fear belongs to darkness.
No confidence, no strength where there is darkness.
This city, this people, at the end is
such a strong city.
Having walls great and high, it is the
very embodiment of the idea of strength.
But its strength lies in its character.
Its strength lies in its purity, its light.
It's cannot exist where there is light.
Well, we know that physically, do we not?
We send people with certain diseases to the
country where it's all sunny and light.
We have learned to expose our wounds to
the sun for their healing.
Disease cannot abide the light.
The light is healing.
Light is purified.
Now, come back to the city, Gaines says,
and the leaves of the tree are for
the health of the nation.
Disease cannot abide this light that is in
the city.
It just cannot abide the light that is
there.
The light deals with everything that is working
corruption and destroys it.
It repairs the damage.
I'm thinking especially now of the more recent
discoveries and uses of light in the healing.
I remember how it began.
In the First World War, I had a
great deal to do with wounded soldiers.
Thousands of terribly mangled bodies, torn by
shell.
And it was then in that war, when
it was so difficult to cope with this
terrible situation, that the method of healing and
even making good the loss of flesh, repairing
the destroyed tissues, the method was adopted then
of putting the wounded out in the sun.
Just exposing them to the sun.
Marvelous what the sun did.
Built up the bodies.
Made good the destroyed tissues.
It healed in a wonderful way.
That was the introduction of a new technique,
which is now, of course, resolved, being resolved
into the various kinds of ways for healing.
Light does it.
It's healing.
It's repairing.
It destroys disease.
Another thing, and we're building up for an
application, another thing about light is that it
is a joyful thing.
It's a joyful thing.
It's an uplifting thing.
It's an inspiring thing.
Darkness is always depressing, isn't it?
Always depressing.
Well, you can see in the very physique
of people in this world, those people who
live in those extreme northern realms, where they
don't see the sun from one year's beginning
to another, they are shriveled, they are heavy,
they are dull, they are very largely joyless
people.
Whereas when you go to the southern climes,
what a difference.
Laughter, merriment, lightheartedness.
Light has that effect, fulfills that ministry.
People of the sun are sunny people.
People of the shadows are marked by, oh
no, an important thing is light, isn't it?
In character.
Very important thing in character.
Before ever the function can begin, you've got
to have the character.
That's the point.
You see, the Church, the Church, before
ever the function can begin, you've got to
have the character.
That's the point.
You see, the Church, the Church broke out
on its great world mission and challenged darkness
everywhere when the Holy Spirit himself had come
into it and given his own character to
it.
You can see the contrast in those early
chapters of the Church's history.
Tremendous contrast.
In the apostles themselves, oh, what a change
has taken place in them, what different men
they are.
They were men in the shadows, in the
dark, but they're now men in the light,
or shall I say, men with the light
in themselves.
Something has transformed those men.
They're changed.
The light is in them.
Here it has come, take those two representative
on the Emmaus road, what a veil was
over their eyes as to the Scriptures.
When the Lord Jesus opened up the Scriptures
of the Old Testament from Moses, the prophets,
and the Psalms, that was not their introduction
to the Bible.
They knew the Scriptures.
They knew the Bible.
They were not just being introduced to the
book, but how dark their minds were.
Now listen to them on the day of
Pentecost.
What light they've got as to the Scriptures.
They now are seeing and are proclaiming wonderful
illumination.
Out of the Scriptures, the light has come
into them.
It has changed them, made them different people,
a different kind of people, hardly recognized them
as the same people in many respects.
You cannot recognize the old Simon Peter, can
you, in this man that is now standing
up and speaking and challenging everybody.
Couldn't stand up to the challenge of a
little maid only a little while before, but
now he can challenge the ruler.
Something's happened to this man.
The light has come in.
Something has been done.
In other words, the Spirit has come into
him, and he is now seeing in new
ways.
That's how the testimony begins.
That's how the function begins.
See, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of
the work, of the world testimony, of the
testimony in the nations.
But dear friends, the Holy Spirit is not
just out to make us retailers of truth
in a second-hand way.
That is just one of the weaknesses of
the whole order.
Certain things are learned or taught in schools,
and then people are sent out with what
they have learned in schools, have been taught,
and they go out and they give that
out in this second-hand phonographic way.
Not surprised that there's not the impact upon
the darkness that there was at the beginning,
and that the healing of spiritual and moral
diseases does not take place, and the host's
pain is transformed.
No, it's not that way.
This is why the Lord Jesus, after they
had all the information that ever they needed,
they had had all his teachings, they had
seen all his works, they had seen him
die, they had seen him after the resurrection,
and they had heard angels from heaven declaring
that he would come again in like manner
as they had seen him go out.
And yet they're not allowed to go and
preach.
Yet they are not allowed to go out
into the nation.
With all that, this thing has got to
become something more than something said to them,
something that they have been told, something that
they have heard with their ears.
This has got to come into them by
the Holy Spirit as a mighty power within
their own being.
Hence, he gave them commandment that they should
not depart from Jerusalem until they receive the
promise.
No, it is not the truth that we
have been taught.
It is the truth that has come into
our hearts by illumination of the Holy Spirit
that is powerful, not any other.
Most important, I venture to say, dear friends,
that if only a small percentage of all
the teachings that this little company represents were
to come up in the power of the
Holy Spirit, some tremendous thing would happen.
There would be an impact and registration that
would be comparable to what was at the
beginning.
Just wonderful.
Let us not be content with our truth
and our teaching.
The Lord made it perfectly clear that that
was not all that they required.
Much as he had given, and much as
he had shown, much as they had come
by in their association with him, he made
it perfectly clear, this is not enough, and
you must not go out into the world
just with that.
That must not be the basis on which
you go.
That will come to life, that has its
place, that is necessary, but you cannot just
go on with that only.
Carry ye until ye be endued with power.
And when the endowment came, what happened?
It was what he had said to them
that sprang into life.
It was what he had done that came
to them as a new revelation as to
what it meant.
Holy Spirit is absolutely indispensable even when you
have a very, very large wealth of instruction,
of teaching, of information.
This is true as to the individual, but
remember that the Holy Spirit is the light
of the sanctuary.
Paul prays about this spirit of wisdom and
revelation.
He has the church before him.
He is thinking of the church as the
dwelling place, the habitation, as he calls it,
of God through the Spirit.
It's the church which is to be here
in this world, universally and locally, as this
powerful impact upon the darkness in that locality
or wherever it is by the Holy Spirit.
The darkness cannot go unchallenged, cannot go unchallenged,
and it cannot eventually triumph.
He said of the Lord Jesus, He was
the light, and the light was in Him,
and the darkness overcame it not.
It looked as though it did, but it
didn't.
It didn't.
The presence of the church with the Holy
Spirit within ought to be like that.
It ought to be like that, registering a
tremendous challenge, and whatever, whatever men do or
Satan does, that light is not quenched.
That light survives.
It should be like that.
You and I, individually, when we have passed
from this earth, should be remembered for having
been vehicles of light, vehicles of light, vessels
of light, this kind of light.
It was a challenge which was healing, which
was effective, not just that we had teachings
and that we had truth, but there was
that with the Holy Spirit in it that
left a mark.
We all ought to be like that.
Do you think it's possible for anybody really,
really to have the Holy Spirit in any
commensurate way and for it to make no
difference where they are?
Surely that could not be.
That could not be.
He said of the Lord Jesus that He
could not be here.
He could not be here.
So it should be with us.
Now this is the truth about the Holy
Spirit as light, and I'm quite sure you
agree with the truth, and that your heart
goes out that it might be so in
your case.
It may be necessary for us to give
the Holy Spirit a better and larger chance
than He has.
We can, you know, shut out the light.
We can deprive ourselves of this light of
the Spirit.
We can have bandages over our eyes.
What might they be?
Well, prejudice is a terribly blinding thing, you
know.
What is prejudice?
Well, it means, as the word clearly indicates,
that you have prejudged something, a situation, before
you really did look into it.
Prejudice, perhaps on the basis of report, on
any one of many precepts, prejudge.
And in prejudging without a first-hand honest,
sincere, through investigation and inquiry, suing this matter,
till you really know, you're closed down, foreclosed
on it.
Very well, you have put the bandage of
prejudice on your eyes.
There's no hope until that is removed.
There is no hope until that is removed.
Some of us know that quite well.
My brethren know that it was just on
that very, very point, many years ago, the
whole thing turned in my life from what
I call a closed heaven to an open
heaven.
At least one brother was there one Sunday
morning when I was preaching, and I was
preaching on prejudice.
And, well, some people think that I can
be emphatic, but I was emphatic that day.
Metaphorically, I had my coat off and my
sleeves up, and I was lunging at prejudice
with all the strength that I had, calling
it by all the names that my vocabulary
would provide, saying it was the cruel thing,
it was the thing that gave neither man
nor God a chance, and so I went
on.
Well, that was that.
That was the Lord's Day morning.
Tuesday morning, I was in my study.
A letter was handed to me in which
I was invited to attend a certain conference,
and if I would attend, all my expenses
would be paid, traveling, and while I was
there, and I looked, and I said, no,
not on your life.
You'll never find me there.
I wouldn't touch that with a 40-foot
barge boat, and I took
out my diary, quite sure that in those
very busy days, of course, I would have
my answer.
I would have other engagements.
When I looked in my diary, the only
dates that were free were those very days,
and I left it on my desk in
the living area.
Now, how am I going to get around
this?
What am I going to do about this?
Very kind of them to this person to
offer me all my expenses.
What am I to say?
While I was trying to find my way
out, my back door, my wife came in
with my morning cup of something, and she
saw that I was a bit disturbed, a
bit worried, and she asked me about it,
and I told her what it was, and
she said, well, I have you any engagements
at that time?
I said, no, just at that time I
have none.
Oh, she said, well, it looks to me
as though you have one of two alternatives.
I would tell them you will not go
or go, because that's the value of having
a practical wife.
I was left with that.
She went out.
As I began to think about this again,
it was as though someone stood at the
side of me.
I didn't see anybody, and I didn't hear
any voice, but it was as though someone
stood beside me and said, what about your
sermon on prejudice?
Oh, well, I had to face that whole
thing before God.
Now, the issue is this, that it was
just that that brought a great turning point
in my life, opened the way for the
Lord for something very much more.
I came into an altogether new place with
the Lord by dealing with that whole spirit
of prejudice.
You can understand how afraid I am of
prejudice, what it can do, how it can
close the door, or to return to my
figure, how it can put a bandage over
the eyes that we will be deprived of
what the Lord wants to give.
Yes, prejudice, pride, pride, unwillingness to humble ourselves,
unwillingness to say we've been wrong, to take
something back.
Crime, it can blind.
Perhaps there are a few things more blinding
than pride.
Policy, policy, you can just shut the Holy
Spirit right out if you're going to be
governed by policy.
That is, taking into account how it will
affect you and your interest and what other
people will think that if you do this
or that you'll be a speckled bird, you'll
be regarded as so-and-so, you see.
Secondary considerations, how it will affect you and
your future.
Perhaps closed doors to you.
Oh, that's, that's a hobgoblin of the devil
to rob you of something.
Yes, it will blind.
He won't go on if there's any, any
policy about it.
Make no mistake about it.
I've often been tremendously impressed, yes, and it's
been, so I may say it, a guiding
principle in my own spiritual life, which I
have tried to be faithful.
There's words in John 5, 44, how can
ye believe which receive glory one from another,
and do not seek the glory which comes
from God only?
How can ye believe?
See, that, that whole nation and those Jewish
rulers and leaders and teachers were shut out
of all that Christ came to give on
this one thing, policy, thinking more of the
glory of men than the glory of God,
walking more as before men than before the
Lord.
If Abraham has a great inheritance, and there's
no doubt that he has, the covenant of
promise concerning his seed, which seed is Jesus
Christ.
What an inheritance!
Remember, remember that the covenant was made with
Abraham at the point where God appeared unto
him and said, I am the Lord all
sufficient.
Walk before me, and be thou first.
That's the way, the enlarging inheritance, before me,
not before men, not before systems, not before
public opinions, and not before your own interests,
how they're going to be served and what's
going to happen to you.
Walk before me, and be thou first.
I am the Lord all sufficient, all sufficient.
How can ye believe which receive glory from
one another, and do not seek the glory
which comes from God only?
This is the way of life, the way
of power, the way of the Spirit, the
way of walking in the light as he
is in the light, and walking with the
light in ourselves.
Now you can, of course, see how all
that relates to the Church's witness in this
world.
You can understand a lot in the light
of day, when the Church was filled with
the light of the Spirit.
Oh, what an effect it had upon the
kingdom of darkness, everywhere.
But when the Church began to lose that
basis of life, it began to lose its
influence in the world.
The Lord save us.
Shall we pray?